Transmission of voice by digital techniques has become widespread, particularly in long distance, digital radio telephone applications, video messaging using computers, etc. This, in turn, has created interest in determining the least amount of information that can be sent over a channel while maintaining the perceived quality of the reconstructed speech. Devices for compressing speech find use in many fields of telecommunications. One example of telecommunications is wireless communications. Another example is communications over a computer network, such as the Internet. The field of communications has many applications including, e.g., computers, laptops, personal digital assistants (PDAs), cordless telephones, pagers, wireless local loops, wireless telephony such as cellular and portable communication system (PCS) telephone systems, mobile Internet Protocol (IP) telephony and satellite communication systems.